A/n: Some of you said you were dying for a quick update so I just had to deliver! This entire chapter takes part across one scene so it's a little shorter than the previous ones, but I hope you like it.
Maria gazed forlornly out onto the lake, letting twilight's restless breeze prickle her skin and praying that its soothing presence would also wash away her deep sense of sorrow.
Clutching onto the iron gate, she willed herself to forget the humiliation of the afternoon, when she had attempted to conceal her devastation while congratulating the captain and the baroness on their engagement. It had taken every ounce of self control to bite back the tears as his eyes had bore into her own, almost as though he recognised the anguish he saw there. But she must have imagined it, for he couldn't possibly know. She had only allowed the tears to fall when he and the baroness had left the villa for a celebratory lunch and she had managed to escape to her room for a moment of privacy.
The most tragic thing about the scene as it had unfurled around her was the fact that it had become painfully clear to Maria that, try as she might to do God's will, try as she might to deny her sinful feelings, she was hopelessly and wholly in love with the man in front of her. It had hit her like a blow to the chest with sudden and startling clarity: her love for him knew no bounds. It didn't matter that he was cruel and cold on the surface - her affection for him only deepened for every one of his dismissive jibes and cruel taunts precisely because she saw them for what they truly were: a mere shield for his pain. The hard exterior of this passionate and complicated man was nothing more than a charade to hide the soul beneath. A soul that would never see the light of day with the baroness by his side.
Worse still, was the realisation that God truly had abandoned her. By revelling in her pain and basking in the bittersweet torment of her forbidden feelings, she had willingly sealed her own treacherous fate, and she was wholly deserving of God's desertion. She had taken His final blow as the ultimate sign: it had been a mistake to ever believe that she belonged here.
Faced with such a devastating realisation, she had known that very afternoon that there was only one thing she could do. She would have to go back to the abbey and beg for His forgiveness. The Lord was merciful and just, and with the Reverend Mother's guidance she would repent in the hope that He would forgive a naive young girl for straying so far from her intended path.
It hadn't taken her long to write her letter of resignation, scribbling some brief, formal words that she left on the Captain's desk in his absence that afternoon. If it hadn't been for the children she would have fled the villa that very hour but she had wanted to tell them after dinner and allow them time to digest the news and say their goodbyes. She owed them that much. She had even briefly considered staying for their sakes but God had made it all too clear that she had outstayed her welcome. The damage had already been done.
A baritone voice suddenly pierced her reverie and stilled her beating heart.
"Just what is the meaning of this Fraulein!"
She started with a jolt and whirled around to find the very subject of her woeful thoughts standing in the twilight, jacketless and brooding, and waving her letter of resignation in the air aggressively. The breeze seemed to become more forceful suddenly in his presence and it rustled his hair so beautifully, but the effect was lost against his thunderous scowl piercing through the dusk.
When the lump in her throat prevented her from answering him he took a forceful step forward and she felt her breath catch at his proximity, stepping away from him in her anguish. Would there be no end to this man's torment? She was beaten, defeated - she wanted nothing more than to disappear.
"Answer me!" He bellowed.
Feeling weaker than she'd ever felt, she willed herself to hold back tears that threatened to fall as she murmured timidly, "I'm no longer needed sir, the children are to have a new mother."
Georg watched her retreat further into herself and he felt the raging furnace burn in his chest at her attempts to put him at a distance. This girl was an utter mystery to him and yet he had been met with a baffling sense of panic when he had found her letter on his desk mere minutes ago. The words had been short and to the point, explaining that her presence at the von Trapp household was no longer needed and that she had a duty to fulfill in returning to the abbey. It had left him feeling shaken, somehow bereft - a reaction he didn't understand, which only added to his fury.
"You do not get to decide when your obligations here come to an end!" He barked, "that is for me to decide!"
He tore the letter up furiously and let the pieces scatter around their feet, fixing her with an icy look of determination with his jaw set in heavy frustration. It was then that Maria began to feel her repressed temper flaring from within like a beast awakening from hibernation. Weeks of turmoil, weeks of isolation, weeks of distress congealed and bubbled raw in her gut as his conceited arrogance and stubbornness lathered her up into a silent rage.
Still she kept it concealed, allowing it to simmer dangerously below the surface, "forgive me sir but I believe that I alone have autonomy over my body and its whereabouts."
"You have a duty to complete your post!" He snapped, angered further by her insolent reply, "Do not forget it!"
"I will be leaving first thing in the morning, sir," she replied calmly, attempting to breathe through the sensation of her blood boiling in her veins as her patience waned. She was vaguely aware of the sky gradually darkening with the first signs of a storm but the Captain's sharp reply soon stole her attention.
"Why!" He shouted, his jaw clenched in his anger, his lack of understanding causing his temper to reveal itself. He was a man of steel control, a man of sharp intellect and the fact that he was unable to grasp what was happening in front of his very nose was causing his frustration to reach new heights, "it has taken me years to hold down a governess! You're the only one who's made it this far. Tell me why you are deciding to leave now!"
"I told you sir, I am no longer needed."
Georg felt his turmoil, his anger, his bitterness fill his chest at her pitiful response. She was lying, there was something no one was telling him. He couldn't fathom what it was but he could see it in the way she looked at him, he could sense it in the way Max behaved so peculiarly towards him, he could feel it in the way his children reacted to his presence. Something was amiss.
"Do not lie to me Fraulein, I am not a stupid man!" He shouted, "There is something I don't know, something that you are all hiding from me!"
He took another step closer, daring himself to push further as she turned away from him, his anger getting the better of his mouth - propriety be damned, "what is it you're hiding!" He accused, letting her take the brunt of his pain as the walls of formality rapidly crumbled around them, "what are you running from Fraulein! There is something I don't know!"
He watched her body stiffen but still her back was turned and he felt his provocative nature rise, "You aren't leaving for duty's sake," he spat, "you're fleeing whatever this is out of cowardice!"
The Fraulein whirled around to face him and he stopped short. He had no idea what he had said to hit such a nerve but her face was contorted with such anguish, with such a strong conveyance of her own hurt and anger, that he thought he might sink to his knees before her.
"Cowardice?!" She shouted, as the timid governess from only moments ago rapidly disappeared, replaced by a fiery duplicate.
"Cowardice?!" She repeated, leaving him more than taken aback by the challenge in her voice and the fire in her eyes. He had seen flickers of it during their rare encounters but nothing could have prepared him for her fury. It made his heart still in his ribs.
"You!" Maria cried, the anguish rising higher in her chest as she failed to keep the words from pouring out of her mouth, "The decorated naval captain who has faced great dangers to protect what he believes in and yet cannot even bring himself to face the truth.. This captain accuses me of cowardice?!" She spat, her repressed temper released in full force, reminding her all too well of a similar argument by the lakeside only weeks ago, "You abandoned your own children in your time of despair, you hide behind an aristocratic mask hardly able to confront your own feelings, you don't dare to talk about what happened to you the night of the party, and you are marrying a woman you do not love!"
The shock on his face was more than evident now and the clouds above them had finally opened up. Rain enveloped their encounter, and before long it was soaking through his shirt as it clung to him, his hair plastered to his forehead as the eerie silence stretched on.
He stood before her with such stunned agony in his expression, so dishevelled in his appearance as the storm made its mark, that he was suddenly no longer the aristocrat, no longer the naval hero, no longer the iron mask - but simply a man in his rawest form.
Georg heard nothing but the blood pounding in his own ears as her words sunk in. For the first time in his life he was rendered speechless. Her accusations had entirely unearthed him as she'd torn down his walls effortlessly, her fists clenched in her fury and her rain-soaked dress clinging deliciously to her every curve. In those moments, he had felt a sudden and overwhelming urge to silence her mouth with his own in a fierce display of possession. Something bizarre and raw and intense somehow existed between himself and this woman and yet he was entirely at a loss as to why or how. Her words had stirred him deeply and he wanted nothing more than to cover her body with his own up against the tree behind her - a tree that, for a reason he couldn't fathom, seemed to stand out from the rest. He felt an inferno of restless desire and angst in her company but as her words tore around in his head it was soon replaced by a nuclear pool of anger that left him wanting to throttle her for her disturbingly accurate observations. How dare she?!
He opened his mouth, intending to bellow her into submission, but she cut him off - his vulnerability giving her the courage to shout louder above the thundering of the rain as it hit her delectable skin, "do not think for one minute captain, that because I am inexperienced in the ways of the world, that I know nothing of pain and heartache!" she cried, her voice breaking, "I have felt them so uninhibitedly these past few months that I could hardly breathe. Do you think me so young, so naive, so unsophisticated that I am incapable of feeling?! Do you believe me so ignorant as to be blissfully unaware of your cruelty?!"
His brow furrowed in confusion and she took a step towards her bewildered onlooker, clutching at her heart in her grief and stopping herself from pounding her small fists against his stupid wet chest. Was he so pig headed that he was oblivious to her turmoil? Oblivious to how exquisitely painful it was to love someone so hopelessly unattainable?
"That's quite enough Fraulein!" He had intended to yell his command forcefully and stop her onslaught of unsettling words but instead it came out in a strangled rasp. Who was this woman and how did she have the ability to pull the world out from under his feet?
"Not once have you tried to remember, not once have you confronted what happened to you!" She cried, unable to stop her vicious monologue. His face was etched with a dark mix of pain, angst, heat and longing as the raindrops slid down his face and his chest heaved against his sodden shirt, but still she raged on.
"And you revel in your isolation! We have all tried to help you remember, only to be met with utter contempt for our efforts. And I'm the coward?" She bellowed in disbelief, "You shut the world out as if you believe it will somehow bring her back!"
She watched him freeze as his deep blue eyes suddenly darkened and his face became a hardened, unreadable mask once again. She knew then that she had crossed a line, that any possibility of getting through to him was entirely dead in the water. Her heart was in her mouth as she gazed upon his rigid form in the semi-darkness, the charged silence shrouding them like a heavy cloak of despair.
"Leave me," he whispered through clenched teeth, his fists balled at his sides in his fury, his pain radiating from every inch of him.
"Please..," she begged stepping closer to him, wanting to wrap her arms around him and ask him to take comfort in her, "please try and remember.."
"GO!" He bellowed and she backed away from him hopelessly, taking flight towards the house and leaving the silhouette of a broken man in her wake.
A/N ohhh the tree! *sigh* please do let me know if you're getting sick of the cliffhangers! I figured with regular updates you might just be able to bear them!